Field
Subject matter disclosed herein relates to estimation of a location of a mobile device.
Information
The location of a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, may be useful or essential to a number of applications including emergency calls, navigation, direction finding, asset tracking and Internet service. The location of a mobile device may be estimated based on information gathered from various systems. In a cellular network implemented according to 4G (also referred to as Fourth Generation) Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio access, for example, a base station may transmit a positioning reference signal (PRS). A mobile device acquiring PRSs transmitted by different base stations may deliver signal-based measurements to a location server, which may be part of an Evolved Packet Core (EPC), for use in computing a location estimate of the mobile device using observed time difference of arrival (OTDOA) techniques. Alternatively, a mobile device may compute an estimate of its location using OTDOA techniques.
In cellular networks implementing more spectrum efficient and higher bandwidth radio interfaces than LTE (e.g. such as 5G), positioning methods similar to those used for LTE may be defined and deployed (e.g. OTDOA) as well as new positioning methods (e.g. based on new characteristics and signals for a 5G radio interface). The similar and/or new positioning methods may provide performance improvements over those used for 4G—e.g. higher accuracy, reduced latency and/or higher capacity. In order to fully exploit these performance improvements without undue constraint and maximize the benefits to both users and network operators, changes may be needed to location solutions employed by networks (e.g. changes to network architecture, protocols and positioning related procedures). Such changes may be used in both newer 5G (also referred to as Fifth Generation) networks and in legacy 3G (also referred to as 3.0 G) and 4G networks, for example.